How can one possibly write briefly about Bdsm and the plethora of arts, symbolism, rich history and eros that it evokes?

At a certain point words simply fail. Despite the physicality of much of the sadomasochistic arts for example, these acts remain profoundly psychological..that is the desire to engage finds its genesis in the body/mind/soul self..

S/m IS an art form. D/s is IS intimately relational and pyscho/emotional.

The mind is theatre, Bdsm is theatre and those of us who taste and become more than here on a seasonal pass..have a capacity for imagination and a desire to have that capacity fed in ways perhaps others lack..

Some of us are adrenalin junkies, some of us find deep nurture in this world, some of us have a penchant for outside the box self expression, a driving need to convey to others and to mirror to self the originality that arises from our cores..

Many of us approach this theatre from all these angles.

Whatever our original portal into this world was..whether whispers of persuasions and tastes in childhood or discoveries thru involvments as adults..discoveries of something wanting in our relationships or discoveries of deep satisfactions previously unknown, Once awakened, it becomes a journey of self as unique, of self as social being, of mores and values, and choice and appetite.

Our appetites change as we evolve, and our appetites change with age.

In midlife, there seems a stopping point, a transition for many, a reawakening of the sexual identity questions that first emerged in adolescence, typically..

and the world of Bdsm spreads before us, expotentially increasing our capacities to find nuance and art form in the expression of our erotic selves beyond the normative vanilla scripting.

Why do so many keep what is essentially a photo journal here?

We could claim narcsissm, or exhibitionism as defined by current sociomedical techofuks, but I think something else is at play …

We live in a culture soaked in sexual imagery as commodity..sex as a means to sell..something else, product X or product Y.

It is NOT expression of sexuality for its own erotic sake…

We are surrounded by sex, and yet, we are a curiously desexualized culture, irony there, the true longing, that to express our sexual selves simply for the joy and pleasures, dark and light of such expression untied to commodification is a radical act, an act of taking back our eros as unfettered, free and innately OURS.

True eros IS untameable, and like art rather than science, it is messy, capricious, unpredictable, and dangerous.

D/s and S/m’s powerful and haunting pull are hard to explain to the uniniated or unawakened..perhaps those that make it here to this world and take up residence have a deeper need to dream while awake, the stuff of nightmares AND rapture, the transformational..

Perhaps from the outside we are shunned as evil or outcasts because it is so powerful opening Pandora’s box, and like all that is innately spiritual and radical there have always been those who would seek to contain and control the mystical..

Simply because you cannot OWN mystical experience, you cannot force it, it is power spitting in so called power’s face..

Just some thoughts from the cat. Have a great day..thoughts back on this musing?

In the lifetime of the average blogger here, the majority between 30 and early 50’s..technology has created a world wherein we have become our own front page headline, our own press and paparazzi, capable of extending our virtual viral vibes into the eyes and minds of a multitude, our reach, global.

The scale boggles the mind, if we stop to think about it.
But given the intimate settings from which many of us write, our own dens, living rooms, bedrooms, ect, do many of us really STOP to think about it?

I think perhaps we have become more cynical and jaded as a result, more isolated in our social contact, if we define social time as time spent offline, face to face, flesh to flesh.
Many people spend their working hours in office cubicles or oout tof the home, and then their spare time surfing..

We have developed new skill sets to deal with cyber intimacy, whether it be friendships with those of like affinities, or
lovers….we have sharpened our abilities to write of self as object,as our lives as quasi fiction..magical realism genre..as ourselves as brands.

Are we narcissists as per the old definition? Consumed by self?
Or is that definition somehow wanting, is there some new take, that perhaps sees liberation and the good in the democratizing of free speech, the democratizing of business, the extension of potential and reach beyond narrowly defined geographical and financial boundaries?

I’m not knocking the web, I am all over it, but at what point is it all over me?

I have always spoke to collective social values.
We built a nation on it here in Canada..we tend to the collaborative rather than the competitive, this however is rapidly altering.

I myself, remain collaborative in approach, reclusive though I may be at times, and solicitious of my own privacy in ways that may not be readily visible.

I spoke to Lucifer of my thoughts on this, and he had some interesting points to make which continue to flesh out this bird’s eye view of the topic..

The net is perhaps not unlike the splitting of the atom, can be used for unimaginable good and evil..neutral in itself if you take a post modern approach. Have we become as mini gods, fallen headlong into our own ever elusive images to the detriment of our worlds, or have they exploded expotentially?

Cat

Lucifer:

This is not a new pattern that is emerging or has emerged, we're, an
intelligent race, have been broadcasting our selves long before Ben
Franklin printed a news paper. However started with Ben Franklin as an
official form of public media, not everyone had access to a press, nor
Franklin, to advertise their services, wares or offers, but as ingenuity
in humankind progressed the print form of media began to grow, and
provide access to those people who had something to sell, share or talk
about...including themselves.
The marketing of self is as old as history can record, there has always
been a hawker, yelling to sharpen your blade, or shoe your horse. Sign
makers were told what the sign should say about Mary the seamstress and
this has not changed no matter how we evolve, what has changed is that
technology allows more access for the same behaviors...and reaches more
people.
From the print media to the radio, from the radio to the television.
Television expanding as megahertz grew and communications grew, along
with the cheapening of costs to make these marvels of modern technology,
so it comes to pass that the oldest of gratuitous marketing behaviors
became more and more creative, more and more revealing and more and more
received.
The net is only the next step in this typical human pattern of sell,
sell, sell...and it isn't only capitalism, it is selling one's life for
the shear joy of being able to obtain attention, it is the selling of
ideas and beliefs but it is no different when Franklin started printing
the first Philadelphia Newspaper some 200 years ago, and the reality to
that is, we as a species have always found a way long before Franklin to
market what ever it is we had to say.
Is it all a genetically predisposed narcissisim? Not by definition, but
who doesn't enjoy some type of positive attention? We will evolve
further in technology, to a point where maybe we will no longer need to
leave our homes to attain physical gratification, just slip on the cyber
suit and get laid from translation of data. Maybe we will have the
replication devices that make food from atoms, like in Star Trek, there
is no telling what the future will bring, but to believe that the
internet has proliferated this behavior is a mistake...we have been
doing it since man scrawled on a cave wall...
*

Soon to be on the website http://www.luciferlazerus.com, on my gallery page there, compliments of my partner, Lucifer..an audiocast version of my upcoming collection of some 30 poems , prose and commentary..The Psalm of the Masochist.

Re, the pic to the side..I did a series of pics exploring the relationship of the self and sexuality to the technological mediums that are morphing and merging with our experiences of the erotic.

I have written elsewhere that I do not believe that technology is conquering human sexuality so much as human sexuality is trumping technology, we are adapting it, rather than it adapting us.

I am going to be writing a series of commentaries on the cyborg self to complement the photos, some of which can be seen on http://www.deviantart.com under poecatt.

I was fascinated by the juxtaposition of the warmth of flesh and the expression of emotion thru the technologies of cam, phone, voice ect..the juxtaposition of metal and plastic and the distance experience with the realities of an expanding view of what it is to be both erotic, and sexual …and in particular as this relates to D/s .

Wikopedia has stated under their definition of D/s that the number of relationships that are developing online has jumped prolifically within this community..there is much fodder for thought here, and I will be returning with several posts to this topic.

However, Wikopedia attributes the rise to the fact that the main elements at play in a D/s relationship are psychological and emotional..two arenas that can be as delved in thru these mediums as within the same physical space.

I am going to have alot of fun with the art for these pieces..stay tuned, and please offer up your thoughts and musings.

Just a dash, busy day. Check back for an expanded post tonight and over the weekend.

J. posted on the pure …hmm… aesthetic delights of
checking out the self portraits of others here. Damn Joy, you lit a fire under my little ass.

I’ve been self portraiting for 3 years now and the journey has been an empowering one. In my twenties I was often requested to pose for photographers and artists, did some nude modelling as a barter for learning technique from a well known sculptor…plunged into ..becoming comfortable with nudity as expression.

I never knew what others saw.They owned it…

This is a seminal distinction between being 25 and being 45.
A couple of years back, having turned the corner on 40, having experienced some severe traumatic loss…I decided to begin the art of self portraiture as as a means of taking back something of what was mine.

My first attempts were clumsy and humorous. Made a homemade tripod that resembled the leaning tower of picassa , attempted to take shots whenever and wherever I could find a modicum of privacy..think…a voice going ..what are you doing in the bathroom for so long?…

But I got better at it.Behind the lens and in front of it simultaneously I became comfortable with what I saw..cast off any aspersions to be a barbie doll cookie cutter version of what often passes for an acceptable nude…and dove into the reclamation of my cunt.

Welcome! Enjoy a growing collection of informative and polemical articles and prose poetry, I write with a celtic influence, on a range of topics from D/s to madness and the way the topography of the land shapes a people and their collective soul… This space will feature interviews and I ... Continue reading →